Skip to main content

Thinking About Language Teaching Volume 1


I'm pleased to let you know that my latest book on language teaching is out and available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle format. It's called Thinking About Language Teaching (Volume 1). Let me tell you what it is, how it came about and who it's for.

I've been blogging since 2010 and, acccording to my blog stats, I've posted over 1600 times, nearly always about language teaching. It struck me that it would be both a fun project and useful to teachers, both new and more experienced, if I put together an anthology of posts by theme. So I trawled through my blog and sifted out enough posts to produce an anthology running to around 300 pages, based on the following themes:

  • Second language learning theory
  • Methods
  • Lesson planning
  • Listening
  • Speaking
  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Vocabulary
  • Grammar and lexicogrammar
  • Cognitive science
  • Advanced level teaching
  • Motivation
  • Culture
  • Classroom pedagogy
  • Curriculum
Taken together, the posts end up being an introduction to research and practice in language teaching. I did very little editing of the posts, but added some extra commentary mainly to put the blogs in context. Because these were written in blog style, the content and tone are often more rooted in personal experience than in a traditional handbook. I should also point out that some of the material has appeared in various forms in books I have written or co-authored with Gianfranco Conti and, more recently, Steve Glover. Where posts are on the heavier, research-focused side I have included full citations which readers could follow up. There is a degree of repetition across posts, but usually to do with topics that I find most interesting, such as the very complex nature of second language learning and key issues such as explicit and implicit learning. 

But don't get the impression that the book is all theory. Far from it. It's packed with specific lesson ideas such as starters, plenaries, fillers, communicative activities, listening and speaking tasks, question-answer sequences, information gap games and so on. There is a great deal of practical guidance.

My wife (and editor) was amazed I could 'write a book in three days'. Actually, the book was written over a dozen years or so, and the most lengthy part was the proofing, formatting and editing which she did in her usual thorough manner.

When I was choosing posts for this book I quickly realised that there was plenty more material for a second volume, which is already written and awaiting editing. The themes for the second volume will be methods, insights from research, lesson planning, listening, speaking, classroom pedagogy and assessment. I intend to publish this in about two months.

The paperback is priced at £13.50 and the Kindle e-book at £9.99. Because the book has very few tables and figures, the e-book format is fine. In choosing the pricing I took into account that the posts are available on my blog (without the added commentary), but they take some searching out and are not organised by topic. Royalty issues and printing costs dictate the difference in pricing between the paperback and e-book.

I have also just discovered that the esteemed ELT writer Mike Swan wrote a book in 2012 with the same title. I imagine he had a similar idea to me - namely that the title carries a double meaning. It refers to my constant reflection about language teaching and the thinking of many others both now and in the past.

I am grateful to Gianfranco Conti who inspired me, in my retirement years, to get reading and researching from around 2015.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a langua...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zaz - Si jamais j'oublie

My wife and I often listen to Radio Paradise, a listener-supported, ad-free radio station from California. They've been playing this song by Zaz recently. I like it and maybe your students would too. I shouldn't really  reproduce the lyrics here for copyright reasons, but I am going to translate them (with the help of another video). You could copy and paste this translation and set it for classwork (not homework, I suggest, since students could just go and find the lyrics online). The song was released in 2015 and gotr to number 11 in the French charts - only number 11! Here we go: Remind me of the day and the year Remind me of the weather And if I've forgotten, you can shake me And if I want to take myself away Lock me up and throw away the key With pricks of memory Tell me what my name is If I ever forget the nights I spent, the guitars, the cries Remind me who I am, why I am alive If I ever forget, if I ever take to my heels If one day I run away Remind me who I am, wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Longman's Audio-Visual French

I'm sitting here with my copies of Cours Illustré de Français Book 1 and Longman's Audio-Visual French Stage A1 . I have previously mentioned the former, published in 1966, with its use of pictures to exemplify grammar and vocabulary. In his preface Mark Gilbert says: "The pictures are not... a mere decoration but provide further foundation for the language work at this early stage." He talks of "fluency" and "flexibility": "In oral work it is advisable to persist with the practice of a particular pattern until the pupils can use it fluently and flexibly. Flexibility means, for example, the ability to switch from one person of the verb to another..." Ah! Now, the Longman offering, written by S. Moore and A.L. Antrobus, published in 1973, just seven years later, has a great deal in common with Gilbert's course. We now have three colours (green, black and white) rather than mere black and white. The layout is arguably more attrac...
26 comments
Read more